stripes and torchon, blocked

Daisy wanted a turn, too.

This is my finished Stripes and Torchon lace scarf from Victorian Lace Today. I used 2.5 balls of Rowan's Kidsilk Haze in "Marmalade", and US 0 instead of U 6 needles because I wanted the fabric to be more dense. The pattern calls for 5 columns of diamonds with 23 repeats, but I only did 3 columns and 21 repeats, to help make the piece smaller. I like smaller shawls and scarves. It measures 49" by 17", which is a perfect size for me.

It's hard to photograph just how much light comes through the scarf. It almost looks ethereal.

a new jacket

I finished the stripes and torchon lace from Victorian Lace Today this morning. Unfortunately, I seem to have accidentally thrown out my blocking pins, so for the time being it is still crumpled and kind of useless. I hate knitting things without a use, even if it is only temporary, so I searched around the house and discovered one thing that it can do quite well for now:

Super modern, attractive, warm and soft greyhound jacket. As an added bonus, it will make your dog so frightened that he will stand very, very quietly to have his picture taken. He wasn't so sure that men can pull of lace.

knitting for not-so-cold weather

I finished the last two pairs of mittens I'll be making for awhile. I'm a little mitten-ed out. The first pair are the mittens from Turkey from Folk Mittens. I think these came out beautifully. The yarn is from the bits I had after I frogged the Crichton cardigan. I'm doing pretty good with the yarn from that sweater - I've used up half of the white, all but about 30 yards of the pink, half of the periwinkle, a quarter each of the red and gray. Once I finish it all I'll have to do a collage of what Crichton turned into.

These mittens...well, they're not quite as classic as the others I've been making. I was digging through some old knitting stuff that I'd forgotten I'd had, and found a few balls of Bouton d'Or angora. It's a soft gray, plied with a metallic gold thread. I striped it with the red merino yarn, and while they're a little "3 year old at Christmas-time", they're the softest mittens I've ever made. The gold sparkles a lot more in person.

I have two projects in progress right now, too. The first is the stripes and torchon lace from Victorian Lace Today. I finished the center section (I made it 3 pattern repeats wide and 20 long) and have started on the knitted-on border. This is my first time doing a border like this, and it took a little getting used to. I accidentally twisted the knitting twice and had to rip it out before I finally got the hang of it. And then I had the brilliant idea to work on it while I was tired, and of course made a mistake that I couldn't figure out and ended up ripping out the two good repeats. So what you see in the picture is only two repeats, but understand that it took a whole lot of knitting to get to this point. I'm only working on it now when I'm alert, and it's going much better. I can't wait until I block it - it will look so much nicer.

Finally, I've managed to finish a sleeve for my Salina sweater from Rowan's Vintage Knits. Luckily there's enough shaping in this sweater that the stockinette doesn't get too boring. All I have to do now is knit one more sleeve, the collar and cuffs, and then seam it all together. I'm hoping to finish this soon, because I'd like to move on to a different sweater.

I'll close with this picture - can you guess what these skeins are going to become? They're fingering weight merino, if that gives you any clues...